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As an experiment, I ran the backup and restore function and set it to backup my system drive and a couple of folders on another driive.

It took about 15 minutes, during which I looked at the details dropdown and saw a bunch of files whizzing by and figured all was OK.

Before the backup, the destination drive had about 139 gigs free. The drive's property sheet said it had 104 gigs after the backup was finished.

I then went to the image file and right clicked. It showed a file size of zero bytes.

Not confidence-inspiring. What gives and why would it show zero bytes?? Does it in fact have zero bytes or about 35?

Many times you have to close that special directory where the files are stored.
back out at least 2 places, then forward back to the store folder.
sample; D:\my files\backup\win7.tib
back out to D:\ then forward to my files then backup then see if the win7.tib has size.

A search of all drives on my PC with folder view set to show hidden and system files returns no hits for TIB files. Should there be a TIB folder somewhere and if so where?

I saw no choice to save the restore in any particular folder. My only choices were among drives--C, D, or E. I chose D and the file landed in the root of D. Are you saying I could have chosen a subfolder?

The file (or folder; I can't tell which it is because it has an odd icon) shows zero bytes when I simply right click it.

However, since my last post I discovered that if I double-clicke the file/folder, 4 gig of subfolders spill out (zip folders).

If I then go back to parent folder, it now shows 4 gigs, rather than zero bytes. I have no idea why that is. Normal behavior?

Lastly--if I restore data files (not system files), can I choose the destination, or am I limited to restoring them to their original source?

I backed up to D:\temp and there was a file there, but I can't recall the exact name.

I deleted it when I saw it had no bytes.

Can the user not control the destination?

If backup put a file somewhere else, peraps it is still there, but when I deleted that file from D temp, my drive free space went back up by 35 gigs.

Where should I look for that file?

If im not mistaken (i dont use win backup) the backup file itself is stored in system volume information on the volume you choose for the backup. Its a locked folder so if you want to fool with it you're probably going to have to take ownership, etc.

Im not entirely comfortable with win backup and restore by itsel,so I started using a third party app (in my case acronis) and once i had used it i never went back.

Correction to my original post: I backed up to D, not D temp; as far as I could tell, I could only choose a drive, not a subfolder.

I turned on view system files and hidden files and can see a system volume information folder on C, D, and E.

All show zero bytes with a right click, which may or may not be normal.

All are "access denied", so I can't tell what, if anything, is in them. Perhaps this is a matter of getting the correct permission, but I don't know how to do that.

As far as I know I am some kind of administrator on the machine--sole owner and operator.

hey even if you cant see them they should have size. I use a 3rd party app called treesize pro. It lets you look at, change, delete, etc anything. In my system volume I have one file thats 13 gigs, which is I assume the only backup I did using win 7 backup. Just deleted it ( i need the space). Hope someone with more experiece can help, but treesize is really good and there is a trial thats free.

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